


the curious case of an over-caffeinated Michelle Jones

by tvfanatic97



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Post-Spider-Man: Far From Home, Pre-Spider-Man: Far From Home (Movie), Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-25 17:42:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20728205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tvfanatic97/pseuds/tvfanatic97
Summary: Once she's had a bit of coffee in her, the usually quiet and stoic MJ opens up and becomes a chatterbox and Peter has learnt to be quiet and just let her be, without interrupting her.-Or: Five times Peter lets MJ go on her caffeine-induced rants without interrupting her and one time he interrupts her.





	the curious case of an over-caffeinated Michelle Jones

**Author's Note:**

> Have rewatched FFH an embarrassing amount of times since its digital release, and couldn't stop thinking about the way Peter says "you've been drinking espresso" during the boh scene, like he's used to her getting like this when she's had coffee so I went ahead and wrote a 12k fic about it bc why tf not.

** _One_ **

Peter checks his wristwatch for the umpteenth time, leg bouncing up an down nervously, palms as clammy as can be and heart thudding away in his chest before his eyes flit back to the library entrance just in case MJ suddenly appeared in the half a second since he looked away.

He’s never on time to anything, much less a whopping twenty five minutes early but his stomach had been in knots ahead of this meeting. There’s just something about MJ that makes him nervous, tense and feel like he should be on his best behaviour – an overwhelming urge to impress her, or more accurately, to not disappoint her.

Of course there’s no reason for MJ to make him nervous, she’d moved from sitting at the opposite end of their lunch table to sitting five seats away upon her appointment to Academic decathlon captain. Those five seats had dwindled down to just one seat away post-Blip, all those that got decimated and left behind as life carried on, with five years going past without them, naturally drifting together as they attempted to navigate the unfamiliar world of the future they had come back to.

MJ now sits just one seat away from him and Ned at lunchtime, and on occasion even joins in on their conversations with contributions that go beyond her calling them “nerds” or “losers” or on very special occasions, she might even snort at a joke made by either of them. So really, MJ is his friend, they are _friends_. Meaning there is no reason for him to be as nervous he is, they are just two friends who are meeting in the school library to work on the English Lit project they’ve been assigned to partner for. No big deal. (If only his body that was currently in overdrive would listen to his reassurances.)

Before Peter can talk himself into just going for an early patrol and ditching, as per, he spots MJ barrelling towards the far corner table he’s sitting at – it’s away from the other students so as to ensure they’re not disturbed by them whilst still providing a great vantage point that allows them to look out across the rest of the library; he figured it’s the kind of table MJ would choose, he hopes he assumed right.

“Sup, dork,” MJ huffs out in greeting and she sounds kind of breathless, like she’s just been running as she swings her backpack off her back and places it on the table with a loud, careless thud which causes her to wince apologetically before she dives into the bag to start unpacking.

She places her black pens on one side of the pile of her laptop, notebook and the battered copy of ‘Othello’, then her coloured pens on the other side and Peter bemusedly notes how they’re arranged according to the order of the colours of the visible spectrum, red through to violet. It’s a detail he’s never noticed about her before but it’s oddly endearing. He doesn’t get the chance to keep watching her and trying to pick up on her other little quirks as he realises she’s speaking as she continues to unpack and settle herself for a couple of hours of studying. “I’m sorry I’m late,” she says, still trying to catch her breath.

“You’re not-” Peter goes to point out that she’s actually five minutes early, he just happened to have arrived even earlier (as uncharacteristic as it is of him) but MJ interjects.

“I’ve had a really shitty, long day and I just needed to go to that café a block away from here before we got started with this stupid project,” she sits down opposite him in the chair that faces out towards the rest of the library, causing him to inwardly fist pump at what he assumes is a good choice of a table on his part.

“It’s okay, you’re not late,” he says, plastering on a smile that he hopes comes off as reassuring rather than stuttery and nervous the way he’s actually feeling.

She smiles back at him, a small, soft thing that makes his cheeks feel a smidgen warmer before she quickly looks away and he does the same thing, embarrassed.

When he finally feels okay to look at her again, he looks up and finds her with a disposable cup in her hand that he hadn’t noticed her holding before which she downs the remaining contents of and places on the table before she stretches her arms out in front of her. “Okay, I’m good to go,” she announces as she opens her laptop and starts typing which causes Peter to open his own laptop and start pretending to type in an effort to keep up and act like he’s also working even though he has no idea what it is she could be already typing considering they haven’t started working yet.

“I was just logging into my laptop, sorry,” she says by way of explanation once she stops typing. Peter barely manages to hold back a snort of amusement at just how long her password is, but it makes sense given that during one of the rare times she’d contributed to one of his and Ned’s conversations it was to back Ned up in a discussion about the importance of cyber security and ensuring you have ultra-secure passwords that you change on a regular basis.

Peter just wordlessly hums in acknowledgement at her words, unsure of what to say so he doesn’t sound stupid the way he usually does when speaking to MJ.

“So, I’ve been thinking about how best to tackle this, when I was partnered with Betty for a project once she told me I have a tendency to be kinda dismissive of interpretations that don’t line up with my own so I’m gonna try my best to not do that. So maybe we can like, go through the chapter page by page, reading and pausing to feedback and share ideas and stuff. Does that sound good? I think that’s good; I hope that’s good,” the words tumble out of MJ’s mouth one after the other.

Peter is partly worried that she didn’t breathe even once saying all of that but mostly he’s taken aback – this is quite possibly the most MJ has ever said to any living being, certainly the most she’s ever said to _him_ in the 10+ years he’s known her since elementary school.

He likely pauses for a little too long and doesn’t school his features to mask his surprise at how chatty she’s being well enough because almost instantly MJ starts up again, more self-conscious and softer, almost-shy this time, “Sorry, I’m kind of doing the thing where I don’t hear other people’s ideas out. How do you think we should do it?”

“Uh, um,” Peter pauses to clear his throat and move past his initial shock at this chatty and almost-hyper version of MJ before him that he’s unaccustomed to. “What you suggested is good, we read a bit by ourselves and think about interpretations then share our thoughts.”

“Cool, then we just write down everything then put it all together for the project,” she catches her bottom lip between her teeth as though she’s making a concerted effort to not say more and Peter for his part has to make a concerted effort to stop looking at her lips because, _what the hell_?

“Cool,” he repeats dumbly.

After that they both quietly start to read their respective copies of the play, well, Peter _tries_ to read, he really does, but English has never been his strong suit and he’s always had to work a bit harder to really engage himself with it unlike with Math and the Sciences where he doesn’t even need to put in any work and he just gets it. At least that’s what he tells himself is the reason why he can’t seem to concentrate. It’s definitely not because he notices the way MJ’s leg bounces up and down repeatedly, or how she constantly keeps moving about and fidgeting, playing with the corner of the page she’s on, arranging then rearranging her pens or cleaning some invisible dirt off her laptop.

It’s so unlike the usually calm and collected MJ for her to be so fidgety and restless, that’s _his_ M.O not hers, so it’s a little disconcerting. “Hey, uh, are you okay?” he asks, genuinely concerned.

MJ blinks rapidly to focus on Peter, like her mind was elsewhere entirely rather than on the play or the boy in front of her and the task at hand. “Oh, yeah, yeah, I’m good.” Then after a beat, “Sorry.”

“Okay,” Peter says, syllables prolonged disbelievingly.

“It’s just-” she starts, before pausing hesitantly and debating whether to carry on. She seems to make her decision to say what she wants to say, “It’s just so dumb that we have to study so much Shakespeare isn’t it?”

Peter feels his brows knit in confusion because he may not be that great at English, or be particularly well read when it comes to classic literature but he’s pretty sure most people think of Shakespeare as being like, _really good_, right?

In any case he doesn’t answer her because he doesn’t think he’s knowledgeable enough to offer his thoughts, and MJ’s question sounded more rhetorical than anything. This is confirmed when she carries on without waiting for a response from him. “Not as in like, Shakespeare’s dumb because he’s written a lot of great work and that’s not up for debate. But academia has like this weird boner for him and other white male authors ranging from pretty good to mediocre and plain bad, and that academic fixation kind of manifests itself in the curriculums of western education in a really frustrating way. I mean, I suppose most academia still largely consists of people that are white and male who struggle to relate to anything that’s not from their point of view as if the rest of us who aren’t white and male haven’t had to find a way to relate to white dudes for like, the history of time.”

Peter isn’t entirely sure what to say or do, but instinct tells him this is the part where he shuts up and listens to what she has to say – not just listen, but actually hears her out and maybe learns a thing or two that might shift his perspective given that he’s the white male she’s talking about. He nods and hums, encouraging her to carry on.

“This academic obsession with white male authors like Shakespeare, great as he was, means that works from people that don’t fit that demographic isn’t lauded in a similar way and isn’t studied at all educational levels which in turn means we get stuck with a curriculum that’s not diverse. I mean, Liz told me the books on the reading list at her new High School are even less “diverse” than what we had here and Midtown’s curriculum isn’t even that diverse so that’s saying a lot!”

“So like, limited perspective,” Peter comments quietly after taking a moment to take in what she’s saying and consider his response. He gets what she’s saying but again feels like he’s not informed enough to contribute to this conversation, nor does he want to take over the discussion, adding his unneeded and unwanted opinion into a conversation about the dominating white male perspective. At the same time though, he wants to say something that lets her know he’s listening, r_eally listening_, to what she’s saying and will also encourage her to share more of her thoughts because he’s genuinely interested in what she has to say – it’s far more interesting to him than the play they’re meant to be studying if he’s being honest.

To his delight, MJ nods enthusiastically at his words then carries on and shares more of her thoughts.

Their copies of ‘Othello’ lie on the other side of the table completely forgotten as MJ talks to him about how she’d design a high school curriculum, including which novels she’d pick for the reading list and why she’d pick those. From there she talks to him about diversity and representation in media and its importance especially in kids and young adults like them who are learning to navigate the world and need to be exposed to different points of view to help people feel represented and to foster empathy and understanding.

These are all discussions May has had with him at various points but he revels in getting to hear MJ’s take on it all, how her perspective differs from that of May as she is a black woman. More importantly, he revels in simply getting to watch MJ speak so much, much more than he’s ever seen her do, and speak so passionately about something that’s important to her which then and there he decides is important to him, too.

The warmth and contentedness that settles within him at watching her speak is surprising, though not entirely unwelcome but he decides to file it away in the recesses of his mind to deal with at another time in the distant, _distant_ future because he’s not prepared to unpack it and what it could possibly mean.

By the time they’re leaving the library, with very little work for their project having actually been done over the course of the afternoon, Peter has completely forgotten how nervous he was prior to meeting MJ. He feels like he’s gotten to know MJ, gotten to know her views and opinions like he never did before which fills him with an unspeakable joy.

“Sorry I kind of derailed us and stopped us accomplishing anything for the project,” MJ says, sounding much less hyper than she had before when they were in the library as they walk out side by side. She’s also stopped randomly fidgeting. “This is why I don’t drink coffee; it makes me so-” she makes a vague hand gesture he assumes is meant to illustrate how energetic she’d been over the past few hours they’ve spent not working on their Lit project.

“_Coffee_?” Peter asks, part surprised and part bemused. Surprised because in his mind he’d always thought of MJ as a tea person, or at least he’s seen her with a teabag hanging out of her flask a couple of times so he’d just assumed. And bemused because that explains how uncharacteristically rambly and fidgety she’d been.

“Yeah I don’t drink it often unless I really need it, and I really needed it today,” she says before shyly tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, a motion Peter follows carefully before he catches himself and rushes to look away because again, _what the hell_?

“It’s cool, the project isn’t due for like a month anyway,” he says with an amused huff.

“Well some of us don’t leave our homework to the night before it’s due, Parker,” she says in an almost-clipped tone that causes Peter to pause before he notices the up-quirk of the corner of her mouth and mirth dancing in her eyes that alerts him to the fact that she’s only teasing.

“You got me,” he says with a shrug and an easy smile.

They reach the outside gates of the school where they have to head their separate ways as they live in opposite directions and after MJ assures him, repeatedly, that she’s okay to walk home by herself and doesn’t need nor want (“I mean that in the nicest way possible and with no offence intended, loser.”) him to walk her home, they turn to each head home.

Peter stops in his tracks when MJ calls out to him so he turns back around to face her.

“Do you, um, wanna meet up again same time tomorrow? To actually do the project this time?”

A grin breaks out on his face at its own accord, like his facial muscles operate completely out of his control as he answers, “Sure, MJ.”

“Okay, cool.”

“Cool.”

The pair stand there awkwardly for a prolonged moment, both unsure, then eventually MJ hurriedly turns and speed walks away leaving Peter to watch her walk away for a moment before he catches himself and turns to walk away because he’s doing the thing again – the thing of just, _watching her_ – that he’s been doing all afternoon.

* * *

** _Two_ **

Their study dates (not _dates_ dates, just dates as in totally platonic meetings between two friends to study and do homework together) become a regular thing that carries on beyond them handing in their English project, which they get an A+ in by the way – thank you MJ – and sometimes studying isn’t even actually involved is said “study” not-dates.

Their study not-dates also move from being confined to the school library immediately after school to other locations like both of their houses and random cafes dotted around the city. They have a system in place where each of them finds a new café then bring it to the other as a potential study not-date location; the places MJ finds are so much cooler and nicer than the places he finds, but he tries his best.

Over the course of these not-dates, Peter comes to know MJ more and more. He thinks – or at least he hopes – that as they spend more time together, she starts to grow more comfortable around him, comfortable enough to start sharing facets of her life with him which he never knew before. Like how she is an only child with both her parents working as high-flying lawyers meaning they’re rarely around, though she reassures him that she’s used to being alone and doesn’t mind it much. One time when they’re walking home under the cover of the early winter darkness though, she quietly admits that it gets a bit lonely sometimes being home all alone all the time and that’s why she’d spend so much time in school going to detention she didn’t have before. Peter doesn’t say anything in response to her admission, not wanting to make it a big deal and make it weird and uncomfortable for her because he knows how much she doesn’t like talking about personal and emotional things. Instead he’d filed that bit of information away and vowed to himself to do anything in his power to ensure she was never alone ever again; he tried not to think too hard about the reasoning behind or the significance of his vow.

As well as the things MJ tells him herself, Peter also starts to learn things about her from all the time that their not-dates grants him to just observe her and all her quirks.

Before he knew her, _really knew her_, he’d thought of her as kind of aloof and serious but after seeing the way she snorts and almost spits out her tea at one of his dumb jokes in a rare moment of her actually finding him funny, or the way she’d done a bit on capitalism pretending to be the Monopoly man complete with a whipped cream moustache in place of the real thing, he realises just how incorrect that assumption was. Through the time they spend together he learns that MJ has a dark, wicked sense of humour but can also be dorky and nerdy when she wants to, and she never fails to make him laugh, even when he doesn’t quite get the joke or the reference with some of her deeper cuts, she always gets a laugh out of him because she’s just able to give him an unmatched joy.

He also learns that despite her constant teasing of him and Ned, with her now having moved to sit right next to Ned and directly opposite him without leaving a gap between her and them, for their love of Sci-Fi, she actually secretly has an affinity for it. He notes how every fifth novel she reads (_yes_ he counted/kept track of it — he keeps track of, as in by title and author, every book he sees her read and has been slowly (because he’s a much, much slower reader than she is) making his way through all of them as well) is broadly Sci-Fi genre-wise.

He learns that when they’re studying, she likes to have her hair up to keep it away from her face so she’s not constantly having to move it out of the way which she finds distracting but when she’s had it up for four hours she starts to get a headache so has to let it down for a while and massage her scalp a bit to ease the tension. At multiple points over their not-dates he’s had to stop the overwhelming urge to massage her scalp for her because he thinks that’s not normal friend behaviour.

He learns that she doesn’t do well with being complimented, gets all weird and kind of rude, calling him a dick and other names, before she finally relents and accepts the compliment though she does it hiding behind curtains of her hair and scrunching her face in a way that’s unbelievably adorable like it pains her to say “thanks” and accept the compliment.

It’s likely creepy just how many of MJ’s ticks and quirks, her views and opinions, her coffee order, her Delmar’s sandwich order and other titbits of information about her he has memorised in great depth. 

It’s also likely embarrassing just how much a positive impact going on these not-dates and even just being around MJ, and getting to see her lopsided smirk or full toothy grin with her slightly crooked tooth peeking out, has on his day. He could get beaten to a pulp by a criminal whilst on one of his nightly patrols but the moment he sees MJ, he swears his super-healing is somehow further accelerated and works to heal him even faster because he feels physically better when she’s around.

Slowly over the course of the months of their not-dates, the slight warmth MJ used to induce within a patch of his cheeks has grown into a full blown crush—no, not a crush, it feels so much more significant and important than that. Liz was a crush, the smart and pretty high school senior who he didn’t really know and more liked the idea of rather than liking her as a person as shitty as realising that that’s all his crush on Liz was makes him feel. MJ isn’t that, with MJ it’s _more_; he wouldn’t be so hasty as to say he’s in love with her because he's not sure he knows what love is. All he knows is that he really, _really_ likes MJ and she's important to him.

The realisation comes to him in waves over the course of a few months, then he spends the next few months working himself up to confess his feelings and ask her out if she returns those feelings.

It’s months of him psyching himself up, saying he’ll do it but then either getting too caught up in watching the smattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose he never realised she had before then completely forgetting how to breathe much less ask her out. That or he just straight up chickens out of it, filling his head with thoughts about how while he could handle her not returning his feelings (mostly) but wouldn’t know what to do if she decided it was too weird to be friends with him afterwards and so removed herself from his life. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he didn’t get to see or speak to MJ every day, so he ends up not confessing his feelings to her out of fear.

This is a cycle that carries on for months, and even with aunt May’s encouraging words he still isn’t able to do it, but today is different. At least that’s what he tells himself the night before their now weekly Saturday not-date, and again when he wakes up and as he’s on his way to the café of MJ’s choosing as its her turn this week.

Once they’re at the café, this one an understated affair that’s minimalist both in décor and in their coffee – they only have three coffees on their menu: black coffee, a cappuccino and a latte – but feels cosy and homely in an inviting way; it kind of reminds him of MJ in a weird way that he’d never say aloud to her, so he likes being here. As an added bonus the owner allows the teenagers to work in the café for hours though they don’t order much besides a muffin to share.

They respectively work on their homework in a comfortable silence that’s occasionally broken by them quietly chatting to point out the funny hat someone who walks past the window wears, or to double check the answers they each got on a problem. Then when they finish their homework they hang around the café, continuing to make idle chit chat.

Peter is incredibly nervous and anxious about the confession he’s been psyching himself up to make, and his nerves permeate the air, making it awkward between them. And with the awkwardness MJ also starts to get weirdly nervous, she likely detects how nervous he is then that makes her nervous which makes Peter even more nervous creating this positive feedback loop of teenage anxiety and awkwardness.

MJ ends up ordering a black coffee which she hurriedly gulps down as the two desperately try to make things _not _awkward between them. When that cup finishes she gets another one, though this one she sips more slowly.

Peter knows what she’s like on one cup of coffee, but he’s never seen her after two cups of coffee and he’s not sure she should have a third so he decides to just suck it up and finally ask her the thing that’s been eating at him that’s made him so nervous and made their afternoon so awkward so at the very least he can stop MJ ordering another coffee.

But, Peter Parker being Peter Parker, he of course doesn’t just outright tell her he likes her then ask her out. No, he decides to try and find a round about way of getting to the asking her out part by first mentioning movies – he figures he can ask her about a movie she saw recently, tell her about a movie he saw recently in turn then piggyback off of that to ask her if she wants to catch a movie together sometime. Fail proof…_right_?

So he starts to enact this plan. “Hey, uh, have you watched any movies recently?”

MJ pauses, blinks rapidly in surprise, like that isn’t what she was expecting him to say and Peter even sees a flash of disappointment in her eyes but he has to tamper down the slight excitement he feels at her reaction because he’s likely imagining it. “Well-” She pauses, sips her coffee. “I watched ‘The Black Dahlia’ the other day. You know, the 2006 film by Brian De Palma?”

Peter doesn’t know the movie but he recognises the name of the director she mentions from when she’d told him about ‘Carrie’ during a conversation about mothers in horror films, how they reinforce the idea of womanhood being defined by motherhood. Peter gets lost in the memory of the day she’d told him about how looking at the portrayal of mother figures in cinema is telling of how expendable women are viewed as being by society as a whole before he remembers himself, remembers that MJ asked him a question and is waiting for a response and he's being rude so he nods in response to her question.

“Well the film is based on real life, The Black Dahlia being a nickname given to this woman Elizabeth Short who was murdered in LA in the 1940s. I’ve read about it all before and watched a series of YouTube videos on it and basically it became a highly publicised case because her murder was so gruesome and she was so mutilated, the killer-” MJ suddenly pauses mid-sentence.

Peter uses the pause to take in and process the things she’s just said. He’d forgotten how rambly a caffeinated MJ is, saying more words in a space of a minute than she does in the space of a month normally without the coffee.

She’s gone quiet but Peter notes the way her leg continues to bounce up and down and how she plays with the sleeve of her cardigan which has a large tiger on it.

“So this woman Elizabeth Short…” He starts, trying to encourage her to carry on where she abruptly left off.

“Oh, you probably don’t wanna hear about all that murder and gruesome, horrific stuff. I’d imagine with, um, everything you already see you want a break from violence and everything,” she says the words then her eyes immediately widen like she’s just realising what she’s just said and she didn’t mean to say it aloud before she abruptly looks down to avoid his gaze.

Peter’s own eyes widen with panic because she doesn’t know about the Spider-Man thing. She can’t know, _right_?

There’s an awkward silence that stretches for a beat as both try to figure out how best to proceed. Then another beat.

Then finally, MJ is first to act, “I just meant like, you’re kinda squeamish so you probably don’t wanna hear about this stuff.”

“I’m not squeamish!” Peter protests.

MJ finally looks up at him and watches him with a pitying look. “Yes you are. Remember when we watched ‘Hereditary’ with Ned that time? You spent the entire time pressing your face into my shoulder so you didn’t have to look at the screen.”

“I’m not squeamish, I just don’t like horror movies!” Peter tries to defend himself again.

“And yet you keep watching them.”

“Yeah, because you like them,” the words slip out before he can stop them. It feels like too honest and vulnerable an admission that it might make things weird so he hurries to change the subject, “So what were you saying about The Black Dahlia?”

“Oh,” MJ starts as she remembers herself. “So it was this murder that became like a cultural phenomenon, with loads of media depictions of the case including this movie I watched and there’s even a band literally called “The Black Dahlia murder”. It brings about an interesting discussion about pop culture’s fascination with serial killers and murder and stuff; myself included because that kind of stuff is interesting to me.”

“Oh yeah?” Peter asks to encourage her. He’d forgotten what MJ is like when she’s had coffee but seeing her now, he remembers how much he likes this almost-unfiltered version of her — she’s still more articulate and measured with her words than he’ll ever be even when she’s had two cups of black coffee, but he likes seeing her version of rambly all the same.

“Yeah, that stuff really fascinates me. Not in a, “_ooh I’m so different and not like other girls_” kind of way or anything. I just really enjoy reading about different cases and watching murder documentaries too.” A beat. “I think the Black Dahlia is my favorite- both the murder and the flower.”

Peter smiles at her declaration, files away that new titbit of information about her in one of the various pockets of his mind that’s dedicated entirely to MJ, then asks her to tell him about the other documentaries she’s watched.

The overly-caffeinated MJ gladly does so, telling about various murders she’s seen documentaries about though he notes that she's careful to not go into any gory details or focus much on the violence and murders themselves.

They sit in the café for hours, with MJ talking whilst Peter happily listens. He forgets all about his original intention with asking her about movies she’s seen recently and about his plan to confess his feelings and ask her out, instead too captivated by MJ and the way she gesticulates with her hands when talking passionately about something and the way that like clock-work, four hours after they first get to the café she takes her hair down and massages her scalp as she continues to talk animatedly.

He finds that he doesn’t mind it so much that his plan didn’t go accordingly.

* * *

** _Three_ **

It takes months of work, work by the people over at Stark Industries along with work by a trusty blind lawyer who’s scarily good at his job, to clear Peter’s name but it’s done. He’s not prosecuted for the murder of Mysterio or attempted murder of thousands of people in London, and most importantly his identity is preserved with the help of some shape shifting aliens because that’s a thing apparently. (Peter doesn’t know either, and when he tried to ask Nick Fury how the hell he just has access to shape-shifting aliens and how long they’ve been on earth Nick had just levelled him with a look that made him immediately shut his mouth).

Point is, he is a free man and after months spent involved in legal proceedings and basically in hiding to stay out of the public eye and away from the media the main thing Peter wants to do is spend time with MJ.

They’d only managed to go on their sort-of first date swinging around the city before his world had fallen apart, and being a wanted man wasn’t exactly conducive to a budding teenage relationship so he’d barely seen MJ in months. They’d texted a bit via the secure encrypted S.H.I.E.L.D. phone so he thinks, _hopes_, MJ still likes him and is on-board for whatever this thing between them is that'd been momentarily put on hold before it even began.

Armed with those reassurances, Peter makes his way to the café they’d agreed to meet at over text the night before - her choice. He tries to walk at a leisurely pace given that he’s actually running early and is on track to arrive fifteen minutes early, but his eagerness to see MJ and to finally spend some time with just the two of them has him running the entire way and he ends up getting there twenty five minutes early.

He pauses just outside the entrance, smiling when he sees that MJ is already there sat in a corner table which looks offers her a view of the entrance and the rest of the cafe waiting for him. He hopes she’s there because she was equally as excited to spend time with him as he was with her.

He doesn’t get the chance to revel in his delight at seeing her already there as she spots him, causing Peter to hurriedly duck into the café, embarrassed at having been caught staring.

“Hey, MJ,” he greets once he’s close enough to the table she’s sat. He immediately notes how kind of jittery she seems before immediately also noticing the nearly empty cup of coffee that sits on the table beside her that explains the jitteriness.

“Uh, hey, hi.” She makes a move as if she might get out of her chair before she seems to think better of it and stays put; Peter has to tamper down his disappointment that she hadn’t stood up and, what- hugged him?

“Have you been here long? Sorry for making you wait,” he apologises gesturing to the nearly empty cup of coffee as he slips into the seat opposite her.

She looks down at the cup he’s pointing to briefly with a surprised expression like she’d forgotten it was there. “Yeah, I mean no- I mean, it’s okay, don’t worry.”

“Okay, cool.”

“Cool.”

They proceed to sit there in a relatively awkward silence as MJ finishes off the rest of her coffee, neither sure what to do or say. They’ve been texting over the months Peter was trying to clear his name but it’s still hard to tell where they stand; sure they admitted their feelings and shared those brief kisses back in London and has sat with each other on the flight back to New York what feels like a lifetime ago now but where does that leave them now?

His name may have been cleared and his secret identity preserved, but sometimes Peter still gets angry thinking about other things Mysterio robbed him of: the chance to mourn his mentor properly, the chance take a break from the craziness of being Spider-Man for just one summer or a couple of weeks at the very least after a long and traumatic year, and the chance to just get to be a normal teenager figuring things out with the girl he really likes .

It’s the latter that he thinks of now as the awkward air between him and MJ doesn’t dissipate. Peter keeps playing with the container of sugar to distract himself whilst MJ for her part continues guzzling coffee, now up to her third cup.

“Um, so what book are you reading at the moment?” Peter asks to break the uncomfortable silence figuring books are always a safe topic of conversation with MJ.

To his delight, MJ perks up in her seat at his question. “It’s this book by Angela Davis, hang on-” she reaches down to presumably fish said book out of her backpack which sits on the floor by her chair.

She gets it out and places it on the table for him to read the title: ‘_Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement_’.

“I’ve read it before but um, I’ve just been re-reading a lot of her work recently. It’s just interesting how the same struggles the black community faced she describes in her older works are still present in this book from 2015, and even today now in 2023. Social mobility is so fucking slow and borderline non-existent in this country for black people,” MJ speaks with hands moving around and with a fire raging in her eyes, her passion about the topic at hand apparent.

Peter finds himself unconsciously sitting up in his chair and leaning his elbows on the table so he’s leaning closer to her, listening intently to every word out of her.

“Angela Davis is just someone I admire and have done from a really young age because of my grandma,” MJ admits. Before Peter can say something to encourage her to carry on MJ continues on, “She was involved in the Civil Rights Movement as well, and worked with the Black Panther party.”

Peter shuffles forward in his seat so he's sitting on the edge of his seat to bring him closer to MJ, this seems significant especially as she rarely talks about her family.

MJ notices his movement and in turn leans back slightly which Peter tries to not take personally. She then clears her throat before carrying on, “Isn’t it telling how the government were so quick to declare the Black Panthers a terrorist organisation but have never done that for the KKK and similar white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups weakly disguised as modern right-wing political groups?”

Peter listens intently to every word out of her mouth, hanging onto each word out of her mouth. One of his favorite (of many things) about MJ is her intelligence and social consciousness but not just that, he loves how just by being with her he always learns so much, she educates him and shifts his perspective and makes him more conscious himself. She makes him _better_.

“Most politicians are probably Klan members anyway,” Peter says quietly, his only contribution to the conversation.

That gets an honest to God snort out of MJ which causes Peter’s face to break out into a beaming grin with pride because, wow, he did that – he managed to get that joyous laugh out of MJ. He allows that sense of pride to flow through him, allows the warmth MJ’s laughter draws out of him to settle comfortably at the pit of his stomach which flutters continuously as he listens to her tell him about the long history of white supremacy and the US government.

The awkwardness from before has completely disappeared, leaving the two of them just sitting in their little corner in a familiar comfortableness with MJ telling him more about the Black Panther movement and its factions across the country and its significance in not just black history, but American history as a whole whilst Peter listens on.

At some point MJ takes his hand in hers, and her fingers distractedly brush the back of his as she continues to speak and Peter knows better than to interrupt her so just listens and lets her talk, not that he’d want to interrupt her anyway.

Before he knows it it’s dark outside and the barista is coming to grab the small collection of cups they’ve amassed over the day and telling them the café is closing up.

Peter hadn’t even realised how much time had passed, too enraptured in MJ and he finds that even though they’ve spent the last nearly seven hours together he doesn’t want to part ways just yet so he offers to walk her home and MJ starts to protest a little bit like she always does every time he offers but eventually assents with a shy, “Sure, dork.”

The caffeine from the three cups of coffee she had hasn’t fully dissipated and she’s still pretty hyper and chatty so she continues to ramble as they make their way to her place and Peter is just content to take her in with the senses of his body: auditory to listen and take in her words as well as take in her-still racing heart likely as a result of the large amounts of caffeine she's consumed, tactile to take in the soft warmth of her hand which is wrapped up in his, visual to take in the sight she makes using the hand not in his to gesture as she speaks with brief pauses to tuck the hair that she’d taken down at hour four in the café that keeps falling in her face behind her ears and olfactory to take in the slight floral scent of her signature perfume.

To Peter’s dismay they eventually arrive at her apartment building and he’s forced to let go of her hand but his disappointment doesn’t last too long as out of the blue and all too brief, MJ presses her lips against his to kiss him goodbye. The kiss is slightly clumsy and unsure as all the few kisses they’ve shared thus far have been, the two still tentative and wading through unfamiliar territory.

But it doesn’t matter to Peter who watches after MJ as she enters her building then he just hangs around by the front of her building trying to contain the giddiness and fluttering of his stomach in response to the chaste kiss. His hand unconsciously comes up to ghost over his still warm lips and he thinks even though months were stolen from them that they could’ve spent together getting to know each other more, he thinks they’re going to be okay – better than okay, in fact.

* * *

** _Four_ **

Peter rolls his shoulders back and forth trying to lift some of the tension that has gathered there over the course of not just the day but the last few weeks of long days and nights of studying for his finals.

He shifts position slightly to let another passenger out of the subway car before moving back to his previous position, counting down how many more stops he has till he gets to MJ’s. Them being at different colleges – her at Columbia whilst he’s at ESU – has made it so they don’t see each other as often as he’d like even though they’re in the same city and see each other way more often than Ned and Betty who are on different coasts entirely do for example. The pair having finals meant they’ve seen each other even less over the last few weeks so Peter is excited to see his girlfriend again and spend time with her without the guilt of feeling like they should be studying attached to it.

MJ’s roommates have gone out to celebrate finishing finals meaning her apartment is free for the two of them to have a quiet night in alone, so when he lets himself in using the key spare key MJ gave him (he gave her one for his place in return) he doesn’t expect to hear music playing from a speaker and to hear commotion coming from her kitchen.

He walks through trying to work out if maybe her roommates haven’t left yet but quickly dismisses the thought when he gets to the kitchen and sees what all the commotion he heard was. Music plays from MJ’s Bluetooth speaker which sits precariously on a counter edge, the only counter space free as the rest is covered in various vegetables and ingredients along with pots and pans.

MJ stands in the middle of all the mess, hunched over the kitchen island and watching something on her laptop. She’s so focused on whatever it is she doesn’t notice his presence until he comes to stand beside her and nudges his shoulder against hers to grab her attention.

“Hey,” he greets, trying to mask his amusement at the sight MJ makes.

She doesn’t quite jump in the air but she’s close, startled by his seemingly sudden appearance. “Jesus fucking Christ Peter!” she exclaims as she moves to pause the video that plays on her laptop.

“It’s nice to see you too MJ,” he teases trying to pretend to be hurt but he’s smiling uncontrollably, too joy-filled to pretend otherwise. He manages to briefly press his smiling lips against MJ’s before she’s moving around him to go to the oven to put a tray of some unidentifiable food items, they look like some weird vegetarian alternative to burgers, in it to grill.

“I thought we were just gonna order take-out?” Peter questions curiously. Neither of them are particularly great cooks, they each know how to cook a couple of dishes just enough for survival and to ensure they’re not entirely reliant on take-out but it’s nothing to sing home about and Peter had figured ordering in tonight would be the easiest option given how bone-tired they’d both likely be.

“Oh, I was bored waiting for your last final to finish and I started watching Bon Appetit YouTube video. You know how you can get sucked into a black hole of watching video after video because of YouTube’s algorithm? Well, I got stuck in this like black hole of watching every single video they’ve ever made, even the ones I’ve seen before and before I knew it I decided to make Chris Morocco’s veggie burgers. Figured we needed something nutritious and healthy after the shit we’ve been eating over finals.”

Peter’s eyes wander around the kitchen as he listens to her before they land on the nearly empty jug of coffee by their coffee maker, so he’s dealing with an over-caffeinated MJ, _got it_. He settles into a stool by her island, getting comfortable so he can listen intently to one of her coffee-induced rants.

“You remember Chris from the video I showed you right? The one where they blindfold him and he has to try and remake a dish using all his other senses?”

Peter wordlessly hums his agreement that yes, he does remember Chris and that video, he remembers pretty much everything MJ has ever said to him or shown him. It’s like there’s part of his long-term memory that’s entirely dedicated to MJ. His “MJ” file.

He simply hums his acknowledgement instead of speaking because after all these years he knows to not interrupt when she's on a roll.

“He’s probably my favorite out of all the chefs in the taste kitchen, or maybe Claire- yeah actually, no, Claire is my favorite then Chris is a close second. But I also love the others like Brad, Molly, Gaby, Priya, all of them. They’re all really big personalities but I guess you kind of have to be to a TV chef or- the modern-day digital media equivalent of it, I guess.”

As she speaks she moves around the kitchen to start cleaning up and when Peter gets up to try and help her she demands he sits down, which he obediently does.

“It’s kind of frustrating that even in the modern setting with YouTube there’s still not a great deal of diversity when it comes to celebrity, or celebrity-type, chefs. Like the patriarchy dictates that women’s gender role is to cook and “_stay in the kitchen_” or whatever but a high proportion of the most successful professional chefs are all male.”

“That don’t make no sense love,” Peter comments.

MJ throws a handful of chopped mushrooms at him in response to his lame joke. “Shut up.”

She then goes back to her rant about media chefs. “And don’t even get me started on the lack of racial diversity when it comes to celebrity chefs, like with Bon Appetit at least a larger proportion of the Test kitchen staff are female but even they have a major race problem too. They’re so few chefs of color that are famous, specifically women of colour. It just goes to show how there’s a lack of diversity across the board over so many industries, right?”

“Right.” Peter is so accustomed to over-caffeinated MJ by now that he knows when to say something and when to shut the hell up, this situation is the latter.

“So anyway, I spent the last few hours I was waiting for you watching all their videos and I-” She pauses dramatically mid-wiping down the counter before turning to rush back to the oven. “I forgot to put lentils in my patties.”

Peter has to work exceedingly hard to keep a straight face. “You forgot to put lentils in your _lentil burgers_?”

“Shut up.”

And because he’s a little shit who doesn’t know when to quit, “I’m just asking a legitimate question.”

“I said, _shut up_,” she grits out, turning the oven off and taking the tray out before haphazardly placing it on the stove top.

“Pizza?” He eventually asks after waiting a beat to avoid being murdered, trying to mask the hint of amusement in his voice.

MJ sighs, looking down dejectedly at the failed lentil burgers. “I just wanted to make you dinner and have a nice date night, we never get to just sit down and have a nice meal.”

Peter’s heart swells in his chest and he’s getting up and crossing the small distance to the other side of the kitchen where she’s stood to wrap his arms around her. “Veggie burgers are a real hit and miss anyway, didn’t Chris himself mess them up in the video?”

“Oh yeah, he didn’t use the right kind of flour to bind it all together so they kinda fell apart,” she says, perking up slightly as she starts talking about Bon Appetit again. “Usually with cooking shows they edit them to show the best version so it was cool that he admitted his missteps and how it went wrong.”

Peter just murmurs his agreement as he ushers MJ out of the kitchen with a hand lightly resting on the small of her back.

“Him choosing to show how even he as a professional chef made a mistake is important I think, because people at home knowing even a professional chef can make a mistake makes them less harsh on themselves when a recipe doesn’t go exactly as it’s meant to,” MJ continues rambling, allowing him to guide her to the living room and onto the couch.

He moves to go to the kitchen to go and clean up but MJ grabs his hand and pulls him down to sit on the couch beside her, immediately moving to cuddle up against his side. “Cleaning up can wait, order the pizza and I’ll start up ‘New Girl’.”

He does as he’s told then makes himself more comfortable as they start up the episode.

The over-caffeinated MJ continues to fidget, her hand which is draped over his front keeps distractedly drifting to the hemline of his t-shirt to tickle the taut skin she finds beneath. She’s able to stay relatively quiet for about half an episode before she starts up again, “I think ‘New Girl’ is a prime example of some of the pitfalls of will-they-won’t-they trope.”

“How so?” Peter asks simply, shifting slightly so he’s more focused on her than the screen; she’s far more interesting that the episode he’s watched multiple times already.

“If the will-they-won’t-they aspect of the relationship between two characters is all there is to your plot what do you do once they get together? The ‘New Girl’ writers wrote themselves into a corner then didn’t know where to go with Nick and Jess once they had them together so they had to create these stupid fights and fake drama to bring them apart again because they didn’t know what interesting things to do with them being together,” MJ sits up from where she was lying, cuddled up to him to allow her to use her hands to make her points.

Peter listens carefully as she speaks about other examples of shows that use the trope and where it works and where it doesn’t. Partway through her rant, their pizza arrives and as they eat it she continues telling him about the history of the trope and ranks each instance of the trope based on how well she thinks it was written (X-Files is still her favorite instance of the trope). Peter occasionally adds a few comments to encourage her to carry on – he still relishes this stream of consciousness version of MJ even though they've been together for four years, and he never wants her to feel self-conscious or embarrassed by her rambling – but he never interrupts her, just allows her to ramble until the remaining bits of caffeine still in her system runs out; he suspects that she’s likely going to knock out at some point in the not too distant future.

At some point, MJ takes her hair out of the messy bun she had it in and he pulls her to sit cuddled up against his side again to allow him to massage her scalp and ease some of the tension from having it up for so long as she continues to rant.

About ten minutes later MJ has gone quiet and when Peter looks down he sees that she’s fallen asleep, wrapped up completely around him. Without jostling her too much so as to not wake her, Peter moves to switch the TV off then picks her up in his arms before carrying her to her bedroom.

MJ always gets too hot in the middle of the night so he takes off her sweatpants for her, leaving her just in her oversized t-shirt that he’s 99% sure is one of his that he mysteriously “lost” a few years back.

As he’s tucking her in under the covers MJ wakes up momentarily, hands fumbling around until they clumsily make contact with his face. “Stay,” she whispers, voice sleep-laden.

“I was gonna clean up first,” he replies, keeping his volume equally low.

She makes a small whiny sound of protest that Peter should not find as adorable as he does. “We can clean up in the morning, get in bed Parker.”

And he can never deny her anything she asks for so after stripping off his outside clothes so he’s just in his boxers he climbs into bed with her and she immediately moves to tangle her legs with his and buries her face in the crook of his neck.

She mumbles something into the skin of his neck, her warm breath causing him to shiver slightly but she’s already asleep, breathing slowing and evening out, before he can ask her to repeat what she said.

Peter just listens to the sound of her breathing for a while, feeling content. At some point he’ll have to get up to go and switch off all the lights they left on and to clean up but for now he just content to have her cuddled up to him with all her weight on him.

* * *

** _Five_ **

Between the school day, followed by a parent-teacher conference that he spent dealing with parents angry about their kids’ perceived under-performance then a quick patrol on his way home, it’s well past midnight by the time Peter is climbing through their bedroom window.

He does his best to be as quiet as possible not wanting to wake MJ and he successfully manages to climb through the unlocked window and closes and locks it behind him without making too much noise he thinks. But when he turns around he sees that their bed is still made and completely empty under the soft glow of the billboard opposite the street that partially shines into their bedroom.

He has a brief moment of panic before he notices the living room light is on through the bottom gap of the closed bedroom door. He quickly closes the blinds behind him and strips out of his suit then pads out of their bedroom in nothing but his boxers, intent on coaxing MJ into bed.

When he goes out into the living area he finds MJ spread out on their small dining table that also doubles as a study /office space where MJ works when she’s writing her articles and Peter works on to write test papers and subsequently mark them

MJ is typing away on her laptop and she has a bunch of her notebooks around her on the table – the black leather one which she uses for interviewing sources, the chrome grey one she uses to plan out the content of her articles and the small red and black one he got for her years ago for their 2nd year anniversary that’s filled with hand-written messages of encouragement. He also notes the nearly empty jug of black coffee and a mug that sit on the table as well.

As for MJ herself, her hair is up in a high bun and she has a pen tucked into it. Her brow is furrowed and her lip caught between her teeth as she squints down at her laptop, concentrating so much on finishing up the article that she doesn’t notice his presence which allows him to unabashedly watch her in her element for a moment. After all these years it’s astounding how much she still takes his breath away, it doesn’t matter if she’s dressed up in formal wear, face fully made up for one of the major events she has to attend for work or if she’s in sweats and one of his faded t-shirts and sleep deprived, or if she’s just woken up, hair a mess and eyes crusted over from sleep; she’s the most beautiful person he’s ever laid eyes on.

He intentionally clears his throat to alert her to his presence because she’s made it clear time and time again how much she hates when he apparently sneaks up on her (he doesn’t do it intentionally most of the time, he’s just used to moving around quietly but sometimes he'll admit that he _does _do it on purpose so he can get to watch her go about her business when she thinks no one is watching her).

Her head snaps up and her eyes are wide like she didn’t expect to see another person. “Peter, hi!” she greets excitedly which he attributes to the nearly empty jug of coffee- for all he knows this could be jug number two, or even three. She always goes through multiple jugs whenever she has a pressing deadline, except she now gets through way more coffee than she did in college.

“It’s late,” Peter says, voice low and soft. He says it more out of obligation but he knows there’s no way he’s going to get her into bed until she’s done with this article.

He crosses the small distance to the dining table to settle into a seat opposite her, figuring he might as well keep her company until she’s done. This way he can also ensure she doesn’t have anymore coffee than what she’s already had because then there’d really be no getting her to sleep.

“I know but I need to finish the finishing touches on this,” she replies, half-distracted as she continues typing.

He’s about to ask her what this article is about because she hasn’t mentioned anything about this particular one to him he just knows how excited she’s been about it, promising to tell him about it once all the pieces had fallen into place, but MJ beats him to it. “It’s about corruption in the mayor’s office.”

Peter makes himself more comfortable in his chair, getting ready to listen to everything MJ’s been working to uncover for months.

“A whistle-blower from his office contacted me a couple of months back, they said I seemed trustworthy and like the right person to get in touch with after that piece I wrote on Wilson Fisk last year. They refused to meet with me but pointed me to discrepancies in their books. There was money, lots of it, unaccounted for then when I started digging I realised skimming of funds was just the tip of the iceberg. Accepting bribes, abuse of city resources, you name it, it was happening in that office.” She pauses to read over something she’s just typed for a moment and correct it before carrying on.

She continues telling him about the months of work she’s put in, trying to speak to people that work in the mayor’s office only to be turned down time and time again but because she’s MJ, his MJ who doesn’t quit and has a keen sense for where there’s a story and will pursue it and see it through, she’d persevered, continuing to go to the mayor’s office asking to speak to people. Eventually, employees had started covertly contacting her and speaking to her anonymously, not wanting it to be known they were speaking to her. They each pointed her in the direction of where to look to find evidence of all these allegations and some even went on record to be sources themselves.

Peter listens closely as she describes the process, in awe of her. He starts to get cold given that he’s only in his boxers so as she continues to speak about the things she’d discovered about the happenings at the mayor’s office he puts himself to work going to stand behind her and he carefully takes her hair down for her then massages her scalp along with her neck and shoulders to ease some of the tension that’s no doubt gathered there over the course of the day she’ll have spent hunched over a computer on her work desk then over their dining table.

She moans lowly at his ministrations so he takes that as a sign to carry on what he’s doing as she continues telling him more about her article. From that she moves on to talking about political corruption as a whole and the role of journalism in exposing it, and the responsibility she feels having to ensure those that have abused the public’s trust are exposed and go on to face consequences for their abuses.

She tries to brush it off as she speaks but from her tone Peter can tell how much this pressure weighs on her, can feel it in the tension in her shoulders. “My very own Bob Woodward,” he teases, hoping to make her laugh and ease some of her worries as he continues massaging her shoulders.

“Don’t compare me to some old white dude,” she fires back in faux-disgust but she leans her head back to look up at him and she has a small amused smile on her face – mission accomplished – and because he can’t help it, he leans down to press a chaste kiss against her smiling lips but all too soon she’s pulling back to go back to her laptop. “Stop distracting me.”

“Sorry, sorry,” he apologises, moving to go back round to the other side of the table so he can sit down.

“I didn’t say stop the massage,” she says with a bemused snort.

Peter gets back to work massaging her as MJ starts telling him interesting facts about the Watergate scandal now that he’s brought it up as she finishes editing her article.

Not long after that, MJ is finally content with her edits and finishes up and gets up just as she’s hitting her caffeine crash, if the way her eyelids droop heavily is any indication. Despite how bone tired she clearly is though, she chastises Peter when he tries to carry her to bed. “I can walk just fine,” she sleepily mumbles, trying to sound authoritative but the yawn she has to muffle part-way through undermines her words.

Peter doesn’t carry her but he does keep two hands firmly on her waist as he walks behind her to their bedroom to steady her.

He helps her into her pyjamas then the two collapse into bed in a mess of tangled limbs. Just before they fall asleep he presses a tender kiss to her forehead and whispers into the skin, “I’m so proud of you.”

MJ answers him with a light snore, already fast asleep.

* * *

** _+1_ **

Peter toes off his shoes, leaving them by the door, before he walks into the apartment. Today was the last day of term so he’s had a fairly relaxed day and feels light, he’s just dropping by home briefly to grab a snack and change before he heads out on patrol for the night.

“Em?” He calls out as he walks through the hallway into the main body of the apartment when he hears the sound of someone moving around. Normally she likes to nap for an hour or two when she gets home from work on Friday evenings so he’s surprised to hear that she’s up.

“Kitchen!” she calls back.

He heads there and finds the kitchen a mess of various utensils and ingredients that cover their limited counter space.

MJ pauses where she’s working to add an assortment of spices to a pot that simmers on the stove with her hands and looks up at him with an easy smile. “Hey,” she greets, leaning towards him to briefly peck him once he’s close enough.

“Hey yourself. No end-of-work-week nap?” He responds when she pulls away.

“I’m making us dinner because why not!”

Peter eyes her curiously for a moment. “You’ve been drinking espresso,” Peter says, it’s not phrased as a question because he knows MJ and already knows the answer.

“I’ve been drinking espresso,” she agrees unnecessarily since he already knows. “It’s a recipe that I got from Garrett. He’s my co-worker, you remember him right?”

He remembers Garrett, her so-called “work husband”, from her office’s Christmas party last year. Peter hadn’t liked how entirely too friendly this Garrett guy was with MJ but he had tried his best to mask his irrational dislike of the guy knowing how much MJ didn’t have patience for jealousy. MJ had been able to tell he didn’t like him anyway despite his best efforts to be as friendly as possible to the guy, but likely because of the glasses of mulled wine she’d had over the course of the party she hadn’t been annoyed like he’d expected her to be but had instead laughed at his jealousy, reassuring him that she’d never go there with Garrett because he always complained and called her annoying whenever she’d have too much coffee whereas Peter finds her endearing and lets her be.

She’d then proceeded to press insistent kisses all over his face, not caring that some of her co-workers could walk by and see them in the barely concealed hallway leading to the bathrooms, before dragging him out of her office building to head home where they’d had great sex and he’d forgotten all about Garrett.

Until now that is, as MJ talks about how Garrett gave her this Bolognese recipe that she’s using tonight to make them their dinner, a recipe that’s been passed down for generations in Garrett’s family apparently.

Peter just wordlessly nods, doing his best to not show his distaste for all this talk about Garrett. Luckily for him, she moves on quite swiftly from talking about Garrett. “So you know that Bolognese is called that because it originates from the Bologna region of Italy right? But the recipe for making it has evolved and been adapted so much, there isn’t actually a single definitive quote unquote authentic Bolognese recipe. There’s so many variations of it, even within Italy itself amongst professional chefs and home cooks, so Garrett’s family’s recipe is probably different to another family's that originates from Bologna as well.”

She turns around to put her tagliatelle noodles in the pan of boiling water then goes back to stirring her sauce slowly before turning back to carry on. “When you think about the history of a place you never really consider the food and cuisine, do you? Or at least I don’t. But there’s so much you can learn from studying food history, like there’s a whole field of history that's dedicated entirely on food, did you know that? You can literally be a historian that just looks at food, a food historian – which I guess is cool because food is so interlinked with culture and socioeconomics so there’s so much to ascertain from studying food history. I got stuck in a bit of hole reading up the origins of so many famous dishes on my way home. I found out that…”

Peter watches her speak animatedly, all energised from the caffeine she’s consumed, and listens to each word out of her mouth, filing every bit of information she tells him away carefully in his MJ file where he puts everything else she tells or shows him.

They’ve been together for a decade, and Peter thinks about how he’ll never get tired of MJ. Not of her rambling about murder documentaries or the origins of pasta sauces when she’s had a bit too much caffeine. Not of her being quieter and listening to him when he’s the one ranting about his frustrations about trying to educate kids with state restrictions or about Spider-Man related stuff. Not of her light snores and the way she hogs all the blankets and sprawls out across most of the bed, leaving him just a sliver of space so he has to fold himself around her to sleep remotely comfortably. Not of her helping stitch him up whenever he stupidly injures himself, her hands gentle and precise as she works even as calls him a dumbass. Not of the way she always says good morning with misplaced, sleepy kisses in the mornings that she presses to every crevice of her face. _Never_.

So it’s in the cramped kitchen of their shared apartment on a Friday evening as MJ cooks and is rambling about the origins of various dishes that Peter has an epiphany and does something he has never done before in all the time he has known MJ – he interrupts one of her caffeine-induced rants. “Michelle?” She pauses mid-rant to face him and see what he wants. “Marry me?”

A beat stretches as MJ doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t even move to stir the sauce making Peter incredibly nervous for a moment. Then finally after what feels like an eternity, “I’ll marry you as long as you promise to never interrupt me when I’m on a roll again.”

Peter breaks out into a wide, beaming grin. He gets up out of his seat and moves to stand next to her by the stove, switching off the stove first before he turns her around in his arms so she’s facing him. He leans up so his lips are only a hairsbreadth from hers but doesn’t kiss her just yet. “I promise to never interrupt you ever again,” he breathes out against her lips.

“Good,” MJ declares before closing the miniscule gap that still remains between them to press a lingering kiss to his lips. Her arms come up to wrap around his neck whilst his settle into the dips of her waist, their dinner all but forgotten as the kiss deepens.

**Author's Note:**

> Me vs projecting all my views into MJ...lol  
I know people want me to update my on-going fics and I promise I'm working on it, I just needed to get this out of the way first. And atm I feel super guilty when I sit on my laptop for a prolonged period of time doing anything that's not uni work so I only spare about an hour a day to writing so it's taking me way longer to write things than it used to before so pls bare w me, I'm trying my best. Anyway, hope you enjoyed this shot of type 2 diabetes. Comments and kudos are much appreciated!!!
> 
> You can find me on [tumblr](https://tvfanatic97-2.tumblr.com/) and on [twitter](https://twitter.com/dayaspsychic) x


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